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state; confessed the great sinfulness of his past ministry, and prayed earnestly for himself and his flock.

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On his way home he passed through Montpelier, where he preached the same sermon as in the neighbourhood of Montauban. It produced an impression on those who heard him very different from what they had ever received from the discourses to which they had been accustomed to listen. A flame was instantly kindled. The elders of the consistory remonstrated with their own pastor in the strongest manner, demanding of him how he could employ one to preach who brought forward such doctrines. He affirmed that these doctrines were the same which he himself taught. They denied this most peremptorily, and threatened to denounce him to the government. During more than three months, the greatest agitation prevailed in his church. I saw several letters, which in the course of that time he wrote to his friends at Montauban, declaring his apprehension that in the issue he would be dismissed from his charge. At length, however, the storm subsided, and the preaching of the pastor from the neighbourhood of Marseilles appeared to have been useful.

A very different feeling was excited when the account of the conversion of this pastor was carried to his father, a man above eighty years of age. I afterwards saw another pastor, who happened at the time to be at his house on a visit; it was truly affecting, he said, to see the old man quite absorbed in the subject, and for several days going about his house, clasping his hands, and joyfully exclaiming "Tout est accompli!" "It is finished!" It is now fifteen years since the event above narrated took place, and the pastor in question has never wavered in his views of divine truth. I have

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heard of him at different periods since that time, and learned, with much joy and satisfaction, that he has continued a faithful minister of Jesus Christ.

The sequel of this history is also very interesting. I received the following letter, dated September 21, 1825, from one of the most zealous and successful pastors in France, of whom I had never before heard. After a general introduction, he says, "I address myself to you, to communicate the favourable circumstances in which the Lord has placed me in respect to the ministry of the gospel, which, by his grace, I exercise. I begin by telling you who I am, and the favours which the Lord has vouchsafed to me. I pursued my first theological studies at Lausanne, in Switzerland; I continued them at the Faculty at Montauban, where I was ordained in 1812. The year after I was appointed pastor at; and about the end of 1817 I became pastor in this place. Till the month of August, 1822, I was only a blind man leading those who were blind. Much external zeal without knowledge-a vain noise of life, (un vain bruit de vivre,) and a profound wretchedness, (misère profonde,) which I did not feel! Such is what I possessed. (Voila ce que je possedais.) At the above period, I went to visit my former flock at where I saw, after nine years of separation, one of your spiritual children, my old fellow-student." (The pastor above referred to.) "He became, in the hand of God, the instrument of my deliverance. I then learned the great mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh; and transported out of myself by the joy of my salvation, I returned to my church, where since then the Lord has given me grace to render testimony to him, and to advance a little, but very little, in the knowledge of him. In spite of the

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opposition which the preaching of the Gospel and my imprudent zeal excited in the bosom of my flock; and in spite of my own unfaithfulness and coldness (mes infidelités et mes glaces), with which I am often affected, the word has nevertheless produced, and does produce, every day its effects. A goodly number of parishioners confess the Saviour, whose infinite compassion they have experienced; and, in general, all are more seriously attending to the Gospel. I can give you but a faint idea of the field which the Lord has opened before me, and of the progress which the Gospel might make if that field were better cultivated. But I am alone with the Lord. All my colleagues of the department are indifferent (froids) about the one thing needful.”

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CHAPTER XIV.

THE VARIOUS EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE GOSPEL.

IN countries that assume the name of Christian, the profession of Christianity is almost universal; yet the reception which the Gospel actually experiences, and its effects are very different. By soine it is PERVERTED, by others ABUSED, by many NEGLECTED, and by a few openly OPPOSED; but in every age there are those who cordially RECEIVE and obey it, to whom it proves the power of God unto salvation.

One class of persons who profess to believe the Gospel, and imagine that they actually do so, PERVERT and wrest it to their own destruction. They believe that the Bible is a book divinely inspired, that it contains a revelation from God, and points out to man the way of eternal life; but they misapprehend the truth it contains, and while much occupied with the subject of religion, their views concerning it are altogether at variance with its true nature. They resemble many who witnessed the wonderful works of Jesus Christ, and believed for a while that he was the Messiah; but of the Messiah they had formed an erroneous idea; and consequently, when they afterwards perceived more of the tendency of his doctrine, they drew back and forsook him. The Jews, in like manner, believed that Moses was inspired, and that

the Old Testament Scriptures were the word of God; they therefore trusted in Moses, and persuaded that in these Scriptures they had eternal life. But they mistook their contents, and the doctrine which Moses taught; the Lord therefore declared, that they did not believe Moses in whom they trusted. Agrippa in this sense believed, but, strictly speaking, he did not believe the Prophets. In the same way, Simon Magus and others believed.* In the parable of the sower, all the four descriptions of persons introduced, are represented as believing; but, in the strict sense, only the last of them believed. Accordingly, in the explanation of the parable, these only are said to have understood and received the word. In like manner those who pervert the Scriptures, while they believe them to be a revelation from God, misunderstand their meaning, and so do not believe the truth they contain; but, instead of it, have imbibed some fiction of their own imagination. Their religious system is therefore at variance with the word of God; but being conscious that they take the Bible for their rule, they are strongly fortified in their delusion, and highly offended when it is intimated to them that their sentiments respecting divine truth are erroneous, and consequently ruinous.

The view taken of the Gospel by those who pervert it is, that Jesus Christ having brought all men into a salvable state," they, by their repentance and refor

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* When a man on whose veracity we depend relates a fact, if we understand him, we believe what he testifies. But if we rely on his veracity, yet misunderstand his meaning, in one sense we believe him, in another we do not believe him, for we do not believe what he testifies.

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